


Addiction

by hailingstars



Series: Febuwhump [22]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Cemetery, Dead May Parker (Spider-Man), Febuwhump, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Nightmares, Parent Pepper Potts, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 16:59:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17901992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailingstars/pseuds/hailingstars
Summary: Peter has a habit of disappearing into the night and sleeping over his aunt and uncle's graves. Pepper and Tony bring him home.





	Addiction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ramble_On](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramble_On/gifts).



> This one I also see in the same AU as Amputated and Heartbreak. You don't have to read those to read this one, just wanted to note it here for ones who have. Please enjoy reading, and enjoy the rest of your weekend!!

After Mary and Richard died, Peter spent a lot of nights sleeping with May and Ben in their bed. He was so small, and it was so big, big enough to be surrounded on both sides but still feel lost under the covers. Lost and surrounded were good, it meant the sky monsters could not and would not find him. He was terrified they were coming back for him, or even worse, they were coming back to take his aunt and uncle away to wherever they took his parents, and he’d be on earth completely alone.

They dried his tears and told him they weren’t going anywhere. Peter didn’t know that was a lie until years later.

Ben died, and that had been Peter’s fault. It didn’t make his grief any less real. It doubled. Grief for his dead uncle, and grief for May’s grief. Maybe if she and Ben had allowed those monsters to drop down and get him when he was little, Ben would still have his feet on the ground.

In the months following his death, Peter reclaimed his old spot in his and May’s bed. She couldn’t stand the emptiness of the apartment, the emptiness of their king-sized. He slept there for her, and because his role in Ben’s death kept him from sleeping unless he had a comfort familiar from his childhood.

He was no longer surrounded, but at least Ben’s pillows still smelled like him. At least for a little while. 

Now they were both gone. Just like Peter feared when he was six. He had an empty king-sized bed of his own, and a room almost the size of their entire apartment. His new bedroom in the Stark penthouse felt bigger, emptier, during the night.

It was during the night his habit formed, but Peter supposed, it was more an addiction. He didn’t want to do it. He knew Tony and Pepper didn’t want him sneaking out into the city in the dead of night, without his suit, to lay in the dirt over his aunt and uncle’s graves.

He told himself they wouldn’t have to find out, so they wouldn’t have to worry. Every night before he closed his eyes out in the cemetery, he set the alarm on his phone. He set it early, gave himself plenty of time to make it back to the penthouse to pretend he’d been there the entire night. The result was a very tired Peter, but one who had his family, even if they were just bones buried in the earth.

It didn’t last forever, though, and he’d been crazy to believe it would. His new parents might be busy, but they weren’t idiots. He wasn’t even slightly surprised when he arrived at the gravesite and Pepper and Tony were already there, waiting for him. 

He sighed, and hung his head, disappointed, only with himself. “How long have you guys known?”

“A couple of days,” said Pepper. “We were waiting to see if it was just a one off, but it looks like you’re sleeping out here more than often.” 

She left it open, inviting him to come clean about his activities in a gentle, non-confrontational way. Peter appreciated that, but he was an addict addicted to his own grief, and he wasn’t going to confess unless he was forced. He kept his mouth shut. Tony stared him down. He was harsher, more direct, and to the point. His questions were questions and they definitely demanded answers.

“How long have you been sleeping in the cemetery?”

“I dunno,” said Peter. He looked down at his shoes. “Maybe like three weeks?”

For a split second, Tony looked like he wanted to scream, and maybe he would’ve if waking the dead wasn’t a real possibility. He would never find out if Tony wanted to scream at him, or at himself. His face returned blank and neutral. 

“You know you can visit any time you want,” said Pepper. “Why are you doing this?”

“I don’t know,” he told them.

But it was a lie just like May and Ben’s. He did know. He knew it was that feeling of being both lost and surrounded at the same time, the missing and the searching of that feeling, that got his legs moving across the city every night. He needed that, needed it again, maybe even more than when he was six.

He might have been sixteen, but he still believed in that monster who lived in the sky, out of sight, but ready to strike and take him or all his loved ones away. 

Tony and Pepper took him back home without any further prying, and for the first time in weeks, Peter laid in his king-sized bed and blinked at the ceiling in his bedroom. Alone.

The following night he tried, and failed, to stay in his bed. Eventually he had to give in to the search. He got up but didn’t get far. Pepper and Tony sat, awake, at the kitchen table, waiting for him with hot chocolate and cookies. He sat between them, laughed and told stories and the three of them pretended they weren’t all sitting there because Peter itched to walk across the city to lay down and fall asleep on his aunt and uncle’s graves.

On the third night of being forced away from his addiction, Peter had a nightmare. It was one that stuck around even after his eyes snapped open. He saw the plane falling, the gun shooting, and the car crashing over and over again, and his breathing was still shallow and fast when both Pepper and Tony entered his room.

Peter clung to Tony and buried his face in his chest as soon as he sat on his bed.

“Just a bad dream, kid,” he said. “Take some deep breaths.”

He sat there, on his bed, with Tony and Pepper, and got control of his breathing. He was still trembling in Tony’s arm, though, when Pepper flicked his hair out of his eyes.

“Peter, do you want to sleep with us in our bed tonight?” asked Pepper.

“I don’t… I don’t want to intrude.”

“Impossible. We’re family,” said Pepper. “I know we didn’t start out that way, but we found each other, and that’s what matters most.”

“I just don’t want you guys to disappear too.” 

“We’re here now,” said Tony. He tightened his grip. “Focus on that.”

All they ever really had was the moment, and Peter’s life had been filled with good ones. Some when he was too small to remember, some he would never forget, but these, that were happening now, he could hang onto them, become lost in them and forget about fearing the future. 

“Let’s go to bed, okay?” said Tony.

As it turned out, Peter didn’t have a choice. Tony pulled him out of his bed by his arm and pushed him through the hallway with Pepper following them both. Their bedroom always seemed like such a forbidden place, but it didn’t look so intimidating covered in darkness.

Tony repositioned his hand, took it off his arm and placed it on his shoulder, pushing him forward until Peter crawled into the giant bed. He scooted into the center of the bed, and the other two sandwiched him in the middle. That feeling, the one he’d been wandering around in the night and sleeping in cemeteries to find, came back to him in waves.

It was peaceful safety from the monsters that threatened to rip everything away, and it was permission to be lost in the moment, to keep his worries about the future drown out and quieted down. He was surrounded, on both sides, by love, by a family made of mismatched parts. Somehow, together, they made a pretty unstoppable machine.

Two kisses were planted on his forehead before he passed out cold, and in the morning, they all thanked their lucky stars it was the weekend. The alarm had failed to wake any of the three.


End file.
